Although he spent most of his adult life living in Paris, the painter and graphic artist Konstanty Brandel often visited his native Poland and continued to consider himself a Polish artist. His work may be described as Symbolist and has much in common with that of figures such as Odilon Redon and Gustave Doré, although Hieronymus Bosch, Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Francisco de Goya have also been cited as possible influences.

Brandel’s imagery often includes architecture fantastically interpreted or disturbing landscapes, inhabited by men, women and animals engaged in strange or ritualistic behaviour. The figures increase the sense of vast dimension and are often endowed with supernatural powers such as the ability to float or fly. Elsewhere he depicts scenes or figures from classical mythology. Athis, a young man from India and son of a nymph of the River Ganges, appears in book V of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.